Monster groups acting on CAT(0) spaces
Presenter
August 26, 2016
Keywords:
- geometric measure theory
- hyperbolic group
- CAT(0) group
- cube complex
- Tarski monsters
- torsion subgroups
- Kazhdan's property T
- finitely generated subgroups
- infinitely generated groups
MSC:
- 20F65
- 20F67
- 20F05
- 20E26
- 20E28
- 20E32
- 20Exx
- 20Fxx
- 20-xx
Abstract
Since the beginning of the 20th century, infinite torsion groups have been the source of numerous developments in group theory: Burnside groups Tarski monsters, Grigorchuck groups, etc. From a geometric point of view, one would like to understand on which metric spaces such groups may act in a non degenerated way (e.g. without a global fixed point).
In this talk we will focus on CAT(0) spaces and present two examples with rather curious properties. The first one is a non-amenable finitely generated torsion group acting properly on a CAT(0) cube complex. The second one is a non-abelian finitely generated Tarski-like monster : every finitely generated subgroup is either finite or has finite index. In addition this group is residually finite and does not have Kazdhan property (T).
(Joint work with Vincent Guirardel).